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The foundation of
government is there laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best
is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political
convenience, and in human nature,--either as that nature is universal,
or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The
foundation of government (those who have read that book will recollect)
is laid in a provision for our wants and in a conformity to our duties:
it is to purvey for the one, it is to enforce the other. These doctrines
do of themselves gravitate to a middle point, or to some point near a
middle. They suppose, indeed, a certain portion of liberty to be
essential to all good government; but they infer that this liberty is to
be blended into the government, to harmonize with its forms and its
rules, and to be made subordinate to its end. Those who are not with
that book are with its opposite; for there is no medium besides the
medium itself. That medium is not such because it is found there, but it
is found there because it is conformable to truth and Nature.


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